our new 28g Nano HQI tank

The tank has been up and running now for a bit, and while not ideal it is doing very well!;D

A little background on this tank! It was originally going to be one of 2 QT tanks we were going to set up, and this one in particular was going to be a coral tank.

Then fast forward to a couple weeks ago..... our 125g tank (which was just restarted in November after a seam blew out) got upto 98.3 after a JBJ trutemp heater went on the fritz and got stuck on overnight! Everything but 1 tonomi tang and a few pieces of corals died.

We had been noticing that the tank was going through quite a bit of water evaporation but could not find anything out of the ordinary. Three days after the heater went on the fritz, we hear a large pop and gush of water! What happened was (from what we gather) the heater was in one of the overflows and the tank either had a crack back there or the heater cracked the tank, but when the water cooled down along with the build up of pressure, the tank cracked all the way from the top of the tank to the bottom in the overflow.........DT #2 down the drain.

While all of this was happening, our shipment from Wet Thumb Frags was being shipped. We had ordered a rather large shipment as the price was right and our 125g tank was bear due to the first blow out!

So, here comes the shipment. We were planning on using this tank as a QT tank anyhow, so everything was set up and ready. Shipment comes and was doing well.

This tank is in the bedroom on top of a dresser. I have always wanted to have a goby/blenny tank so figured this was going to be the right tank for it. The fish would help feed the corals, and I love these fish! ;D

So the first fish we got was a barnacle blenny as these are just my absolute favorite! Yesterday I added a second barnacle blenny to the tank


The next fish I added were 2 greenbanded goby and a yellow watchman gobie


Curt loves fireshrimp and said pairing 2 up would cause them to bond together and make little coral food! Which they already have


Last night I was at the LFS and found this little clown goby in a tank that was poorly lit. I thought it was a green clown so I bought him. When I got him home, Curt said he had never seen anything like this. Instead of being green he was a beautiful turqouise blue color. Looked like a cross between a citron and clown..... but an odd color.



Back to when the corals came....... we had a big shipment all at once and was very pleased with them
here us where we were floating them....this was only half, the other half were in another qt tank


so here are some close ups of some of our corals




here are a few full tank shots....as you can see a majority of the frags right now are still on the frag racks until we figure out what we want to do



this is the coral that started it all.....the reptoid acro from Wet Thumb Frags

saw this on this site and had to get it.....(still hasnt completley setteled in or colored up) Since I was getting that frag, it was cheaper to buy many more of course (No shipping if you spend x amount!)

this is the zoa garden that we will be starting....glued onto the back of an old clam shell (was messing with them before picture so many are still closed)


Will keep pictures coming on this tank as everything grows more

 

Great account schackmel
and great images

you did get a lot of coral frags it seems from the images
is that 2 racks full, plus whats on the barnacle, rock and sand bed


the edit was to add Wet Thumb Frags- the filter is just doing its job and does not recognise a legitimate use of the 3 letters concerned

Steve

 

What a great looking haul, and a wonderful account of how you got here. Congrats hope all goes well.

 

thanks

yep two frag racks and the barnacle full of corals.......the barnacle blenny are not that happy with the corals!

We went to a frag swap that weekend and picked up a few pieces of coral there also! Plus our lithophyline is one of the only corals that survived the heater incident and is also in that tank! I did not get a picture of that because it is still brown, but is coloring up very nicely!

This weekend I want to play around with the camera a bit......I bought the porthole lens cover and will try some top down pictures.

We feed a variety of foods and do VERY FREQUENT water changes. We feed a variety of oyster feast, rotifers, artic pods, zooplankton s, reef amino, coral freenzy and cyclopeeze The biggest problem i forsee is keeping up with the calcium and magnesium in this tank. Our kH right now is 9, and our mag is a little low but hopefully with the frequent water changes we can keep up!

 

here are some more pictures........






We have a 150w 14k MH, big ball of chaeto, UV sterilizer, wavemaker and 2 nano hydor koralia We are running both carbon and phosguard

We did loose a couple pieces of coral originally but i think everything else is setteling in nicely. We had a small outbreak of RTN and figured out that we were having phosphate issues (was very surprised by that as the tank was originally filled with 80% of water from the DT (before it went down) and that tank had both carbon, GFO and just started biopellets.

I am very excited to see how everything colors up once we get the phosphates down

 

I want to see a picture of a Lithopyline coral. ;D

(I swear she makes up these names just to irritate me)

 

you know I do I was close.........lithophyllon
My dyslexia kicked in! :

 

Very nice! i just upgrade a 29g to MH, im wanting a anemone and SPS now! haha

 

BTW, the color balance was not adjusted on any of these pictures. The Blueline Clown Goby looks greenish in the above pictures. In real life, it really is blue.

 

I really like what you did with the zoas' and the clam shell. The tank looks great. I am especially interested in seeing how the corals color up under the lighting. The blenny and gobies look perfect in the tank.